‘Why protect K Chandrasekhar Rao, KT Rama Rao?’: Union minister Bandi Sanjay Kumar seeks CBI probe into Telangana phone-tapping case; alleges Congress-BRS understanding

HYDERABAD: Union minister of state for home, Bandi Sanjay Kumar, has demanded that the Telangana phone-tapping case be handed over to the CBI. Speaking to reporters in Karimnagar on Saturday, he said that the central agency should take over the case given that phones of even high court judges were tapped.He added that before coming to power in Dec 2023, chief minister A Revanth Reddy had demanded a CBI enquiry into the case, but did not keep his word after winning the assembly election. He also claimed that former state intelligence bureau chief Prabhakar Rao had fled to the US after the Congress came to power in the state.Sanjay asked why the investigators had not issued a notice to former chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and former minister K T Rama Rao during whose term the alleged illegal phone tapping of opposition leaders and others took place.

The two leaders must be questioned as the arrested police officers had said that they had tapped phones on the instructions of their bosses. "Why is the Congress govt trying to protect them?" he asked.

"Is there an internal understanding between Congress and BRS?"The Union minister also expressed doubts about the timing of Prabhakar Rao returning from the US. "Rao came back after KTR visited the US in the first week of June. The Congress govt was treating him like a state guest, although he is the prime accused in the case. I too was arrested in the SSC question paper leak case on the directions of Prabhakar Rao a few years ago." Rao spent 15 months in the US before returning on June 8 after the Supreme Court granted him interim protection from arrest.Sanjay said Prabhakar Rao ruined the lives of many people by tapping their phones. The minister also said he received a call from the SIT probing the case and that he would cooperate with the investigation.